William Brydon, un héro
▻https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Brydon
Remnants of an Army’ (1879) by Elizabeth Butler portraying William Brydon arriving at the gates of Jalalabad as the only survivor of a 16,500 strong evacuation from Kabul in January 1842.
Dans l’empire du Royaume Uni le Raj britannique fut surtout une entreprise privée, de la British East India Company avec le soutien de la couronne . Elle recruta ses propres armées privées. En transformant l’économie des pays conquis suivant ses intérêts l’ East India Company causa de grandes famiines et des rébellions quelles maîtrisa par des sanglantes campagnes militaires. Le médecin William Brydon (1811 – 1873, mort à 61 ans) passa sa vie dans les batailles des guerre totales contre les peuples colonisés.
L’age d’or du colonialisme
The Last Stand, by William Barnes Wollen (1898)
He studied medicine at University College London and at the University of Edinburgh] In 1835, he subsequently was appointed as an assistant surgeon in the Bengal Army of the British East India Company .
Retreat from Kabul
In 1841 William Brydon was posted to Afghanistan as the assistant surgeon of Shah Shuja’s Contingent—a British officered infantry force recruited in India to provide protection for the British-backed ruler in Kabul. This mercenary unit formed part of a combined British and Indian army which occupied the city in August 1839.
In January 1842, following the killing of the two British representatives there, it was decided to withdraw the British force in Kabul. The nearest British garrison was in Jalalabad, 90 miles (140 km) away, and the army would need to go through mountain passes with the January snow hindering them.
Under the command of Major-General William George Keith Elphinstone, 4,500 British and Indian soldiers plus 12,000 civilian camp followers, including wives and children, set out for Jalalabad on 6 January 1842, on the understanding that they had been offered safe passage. Afghan tribesmen intercepted them and proceeded to attack them during the next seven days. Brydon recorded in his diary that as early as the first night of the retreat many of his sepoys were crippled by frostbite and had to be abandoned in the snow.
After recovering from the wounds sustained during the retreat from Kabul, Brydon took part in the 2nd Anglo-Burmese War of 1852, when Rangoon was captured. Later he was serving as a regimental doctor at Lucknow when the Indian Mutiny (1857-1859) started and, along with his wife and children, survived the subsequent siege of the residency, being badly wounded in the thigh. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in November 1858 .
La photo montre l’homme à 38 ans. Photograph of Dr. William Brydon, 2 January 1864 (à 52 ans)
Notons que les armées occidentales y compris celles de la British East India Company n’ont jamais eu raison des peuples d’Afghanistan.
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